Friends remember trio as happy, popular

May 04, 2004|By Joe McDermott Of The Morning Call

They were known as the "Fab 5" long before anyone ever heard of the fashion mavens from the Bravo network.

Kirstin Brown's four closest friends proudly claimed first dibs on that moniker Monday afternoon as they struggled with the death Sunday of the pretty, inspiring 16-year-old, who along with her brother and sister, was killed by a mother tormented by mental demons.

Though the Tri-Valley School District encompasses 100 square miles of northwestern Schuylkill County, the epicenter of the emotional earthquake that leveled this community was the Tri-Valley Junior-Senior High School, where the three Brown children were spaced in alternating grades among the 450 students.

There was Jared, the senior, a hard-working 18-year-old chess player and martial arts enthusiast who enjoyed hunting and the outdoors and confounded friends by his ability to get his deer every year. He wanted to attend Bradley Academy for the Visual Arts in York to study animation.

Kirstin, 16, the sophomore, just finished acting in the school play, "Hollywood Hillbillies" and was celebrating its success with fellow cast members when her mother arrived to take her away. She was just learning to appreciate the world outside her small community and had traveled in recent years with her church youth group to visit Germany and Poland.

And Kelsey, 14, an eighth-grader, enjoyed affecting a mock British accent that irritated her older sister. But she idolized the older girl and would have joined her this summer on a church trip to Arizona and New Mexico.

The ties that bind this close-knit community are strengthened through the generations. People born here tend to stay here. Schools Superintendent Jack Herb has faculty members on the ambulance squads that responded to Alfred Brown's home when the call came in about his son, Jared.

Herb's wife was Jared's first-grade teacher.

Jared's best friend was supposed to take Kirstin to the prom. He was going to take his friend's sister.

Those ties made it much tougher to deal with the aftershocks that rumbled down Route 25 on Monday. A half-mile west of the school, classmates gathered at St. Andrew's United Methodist Church to remember their friends.

They talked. They shared. At times they even enjoyed a bittersweet laugh recalling happier times.

For the remaining members of the Fab 5, sophomores Laura Costa, Kate Kline, Kayla Stiely and Melanie Zilker, the memory of Kirstin's quick smile and enthusiasm served to moderate a grief process aggravated by the incomprehensible nature of the crime.

Even the superintendent was stunned.

"We have all sorts of families that are dysfunctional," Herb said. "But dysfunctional doesn't mean killing five people."

The girls, who have been best friends since second grade, couldn't make sense of the tragedy.

"I could understand an accident," said Kline. "But the way it happened it's just so hard to hear your friend has been murdered -- by her mother."

All four girls, including those who attended a post-play cast party with Kirstin on Sunday, learned of the deaths Sunday night when Pastor Carl Shankweiler of Trinity Lutheran Church visited their homes to break the news.

Costa was in shock. She couldn't even cry, she said, until Monday afternoon when she saw Kirstin's photo on a poster on the school wall. It was a picture, she said with a small smile and laugh, that Kirstin hated because she was wearing her glasses.

"If Kirstin could see it, she'd have a fit," Costa said.

Then, she said, she cried.

The girls described all three of the Brown children as popular, friendly, engaging and happy. They were aware of Hollie Mae Gable's mental problems, but she was also a part of her children's lives.

Shankweiler said Kirstin asked him about six months ago if he could find an apartment for Gable in Valley View, the village just west of Hegins.

"They recognized the problems, but they wanted their mother near them," said Shankweiler, who became close to the family after Kirstin, and later Kelsey, joined the Teen Time Youth Group at his church in Valley View.

Shankweiler said their father, Alfred Brown, was devastated, but had strong family and community support to help him. Brown, who owns a coal mine in the area, considered the children the cornerstone of his life, the pastor said. "He worked hard to support them."

A 2000 Schuylkill County Court filing in the custody dispute between Alfred Brown and Gable called for Gable to get counseling to help in her relationship with her children. It also called for Brown to get counseling for Jared for unspecified problems.

Elaine Carter of Pitman said Gable "would just go out of her way to do whatever she could for her kids. She didn't have a lot of money, but she did what she could for her kids."